I never heard of the reviewers on the back cover of this book, but one thought this novel better than Julian Barnes’ “The Sense of an Ending”. The author is the Cairo bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times and who was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize. Journalism and fiction are about as different as sprinting and a marathon, so I read the first sentence before borrowing it from the great Brooklyn Central Library.

” I remember him coming home from shipyards and factories, boots clinking and thumping down the sidewalk, and him whistling and smoking a rolled cigarette, metal flakes in his hair, hands stained and chipped as if he were wandering in from a war.”

I could see this blue collar worker coming home from his job. I gave the book a try.

Jeffrey Fleishman writes with feeling. The book is ostensibly about the affect of Alzheimer’s on a foreign correspondent. It is far more than this. It is a coming of age book seen through the rear view mirror. It is about the love of family as it drains in an hour-glass.

The novel takes literary license. There are multiple narrations and the memory flashbacks, which at a point overtake the Alzheimer theme, are more vivid in dialogue than one would expect even from a patient whose long term memory survives. Early on a relationship that develops with the father that to me seemed out of character and unrealistic. Nonetheless, it becomes central to the plot in a positive way. While all reviews I have read about this book are very positive, one woman said that she did not relate to how the correspondent’s wife spoke to him as she tried to rekindle his memory. I cannot attest to how all women speak, but I felt this relationship to be one of the most heart wrenching aspects of the book.

I visualized Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” and the actor John Goodman while reading this book. The latter because I could see him playing the working class father if this novel was made into an Indie film. The former because of the actual torment of this disease on the patient and the family. Alzheimer and dementia affect short term memory initially, but ultimately devastate the mind and body. As in this book, patient’s are aware that they are missing something they cannot not retrieve. Some resign, some fight, all are frustrated. There is an internal scream by the patient and an external scream by their family.

I cared for my Mom before she died from dementia. It affected her ability to communicate, as well as her memory. She would forget how to compose words and sentences. I could see them in her head, her eyes and mouth trying to translate; but the synapse was a cavern that could not be breached. Some days were better than others. It was a roller coaster of extreme emotion for her and for me. Writing would damage her pride.

Alzheimer disease is different from dementia. My Mom knew who I was to the end. It made the dementia somewhat easier from my perspective. The subconscious can be a black hole when ignited by Alzheimer disease. The love, recognition and memory that the patient has of family and close relationships go dark. Patient and family share the loss. It is a Tabla Rasa without renewal.

This is a book well worth reading. Mr. Fleishman writes cleanly, with emotion and with insight. All the reviewers on the book cover turn out to be other correspondent authors from the Los Angeles Times. If they write as well as Mr. Fleishman, they too are worth reading. I am not sure what all of this says about the Los Angeles Times and journalism.

One last note. The publisher, Steer Forth Press, has a reading group guide, with questions for discussion written by Mr. Fleishman. It seems for the young adult market, as the questions are plot driven. They are the type of question you had to answer in high school English, or a poor college course. In my view, they demean the book.

This compilation of short stories by Eugene Cross is published by Dzanc Books. Mr. Cross was born and raised in Erie, Pennsylvania. He writes what he knows. His characters are real people, as you might find in Richard Russo’s works. The writing is clean, the stories are varied and they subtly move as the characters and plot develop. In the “Harvesters” you can feel the desolation,loneliness and stark human need as if captured in a Wyeth painting. “This Too” is a writing lesson in emotional pitch captured in two and a half pages.

Some of the stories seem drawn from his Erie locale. I hope that he many more stories and a novel in him.

As this was his first published book I was drawn to the Acknowledgments. I first thought the editor may have cleaned it up. To his friends at a number of writing programs he acknowledged that they are “gentlemen-scholars and the finest group of cronies a fella could ask for.” One of his teachers is the “toughest son of a gun I’ve ever had the pleasure to know.” I kept thinking Andy Griffith and Opie.

I went to college with two guys from Erie. The first Denny was from a rural town just outside of Erie. For those of us from metropolitan areas he was a hayseed. He was a science major in a school that was not known for science. A relatively big guy, his innocence could be dangerous. Every night he would call his hometown girlfriend to be sure she was at home and not going out with anyone. He was a virgin and had no knowledge of sex. We would ask him if he ever did Seaford or Wantagh, two towns in New York, with his girl friend. He had.
One night his girl friend did not answer the phone. Denny was furious. He packed up all of the belongings in his room, put them on his back and left in his muscle car. He never returned to school.

At the opposite end of the spectrum was Jim. He was a very good-looking guy who was also really nice. Girls would fall all over him, but he was shy and disinterested. He came from a wealthy family in Erie and I suspect he may have lived in one of the upscale neighborhoods that Mr. Gross refers to in one of his stories. He mostly played basketball in the gym. Only about 5’8″ he had great skills. He could in mid-air with 6’4″ defenders around him, dribble the lane, pass the ball under one leg, then the other and lay it in with his left hand. He was given a nickname that described his good looks. In sophomore year he hooked up with a girl. After that the smile was still the same, but the innocence disappeared.

These were real people with real stories. Like the characters in Mr. Gross’ stories you know them. Mr. Gross also has a story. He dedicated the book to his Dad, who believed in him. He was pre-med, but he wanted to write. He struggled as do most writers of short stories. Dzanc Books, a publisher which encourages new writers, had a contest. It was not just for writing, but for writing and social action. Mr. Gross tutored people from Nepal and other countries in Erie. He was notified that his social action would earn him the prize, but had to wait to know if his writing would as well. He was award the 2009 Dzanc Prize. He know teaches at Northwestern University.

Dzanc has a number of imprints. You should check them out, read this book and await Mr. Gross’ next book.

It has been ten years since Howard Blum wrote “Eve of Destruction”, a non-fiction account of the Yom Kippur War. Mr. Blum had one of his books turned into a motion picture and he seemed to have this in mind in writing this book. It reads like a screen-play. While more current histories are written in a narrative style, the author’s stylistic “historical fiction” makes you wonder where the dividing line is. The book is a page turner this despite this deficit.

There are general lessons to be learned from this book. Two that are illustrated are: the influence of internal and external politics on military strategy and outcome, and the risk of failure from complacency and arrogance.

Israel began to believe its own invincibility after the Six Day War. Before the Yom Kippur War its arab neighbors had negligible training and inferior weaponary. Both were improved by the time of the Yom Kippur War and the numerical superiority of Egypt and Syria continued to exist. Given Israel’s size and fighting population it cannot sustain a long war and its superiority is based on its air force. In time Israel’s superiority will further narrow, so having destablized neighbors engaged in in-fighting is temporarily beneficial to it.

The in-fighting amongst Israel’s general command before and during the Yom Kippur War is not unique to Israel. The military is a pathway to political power in Israel and both generals and politicians were at times as or more focused on their political career than on their mission. The more striking point in the book is the limitation of U.S. political support on Israeli military strategy. This too is not unknown, but the degree of it even in critical situations is remarkable. Israel had innumerable indications and warnings that its was to be attacked and could have taken pre-emptive action. Had it so acted the result would more likely have been like the Six Day War, if there would have been a war at all. Due to its fear of upsetting U.S. political support it waited until it was attacked. Israel’s complancency and arrogance lead it not to prepare and compounded its problem and near destruction. Nonetheless this second guessing of U.S. reaction is constantly in the minds of Israel’s leaders and its general command. It is an unhealthy dependency and one which is a double edged sword.

The book describes the Egyptian perspective, but perhaps due to the availability of sources, it is more focused on Israel’s. A question that the book leaves unanswered is the duplicity of cease-fire arrangements. There was a point during the Yom Kippur War that Israel believed it would be overrun. It had armed its nuclear warheads and Golda Meir had pills to commit suicide. Given its small land mass had Syria crossed the Jordan, as then seemed likely, any international effort to have a cease-fire would have been too late. The book does not address whether any such effort was being planned by the U.S., Russia and the U.N. It does not seemed to have been the case, although it is likely that both the U.S. and Russia would have known about the arming of the nuclear weapons. The book does note that after Israel started to bring more forces across the Suez into Egypt, a cease-fire resulted. It is not likely that Israel would have wanted to conquer Egypt as it could not sustain such a victory given differences in population and issues of supply lines. Egypt had no nuclear weapons to use, so why the cease-fire in one case and not the other. The book does not address this.

Given a historical mindset of persecution it is easy to understand in light of the Yom Kippur war why Israel does not place too much weight on the U.S. or any international body coming to its defense. This is not a healthy situation as increasingly it will become like a cornered animal. Both Israel and its arab neighbors remain pawns in an international game. They each bear responsibility for their predicament, but it increasingly seems less self-correcting. This October will be the 40th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War. I would not be surprised if there is unwanted pyrotechnics.